Customization Basics Part One

This tutorial is based on version two of Indexhibit.

There are a variety of places where you can customize your Indexhibit website. These are the most common places edits can be made:

1. Admin > Plugins
2. Admin > Formats
3. Exhibit > Edit
4. /ndxzsite/$theme/style.css
5. Exhibit format / CSS rules

Admin > Plugins

Indexhibit ships with a plugin called "Indexhibit Style" that can easily change the most basic attributes of your site including:

- color of links
- text style
- width of 'index'
- line height

Simply enable the plugin to activate it - then make your adjustments. This plugin can not do everything (we plan to add more features to it in the future). Remember, you can always disable this plugin if you wish.

Admin > Formats

In the Admin > Formats area of the Indexhibit studio some formats have global options you can adjust. For instance, the Visual Index format (the default format for Indexhibit) allows you to change the basic white space around thumbnails, the thumbnail orientation within the bounding box and also whether you want a dark or light overlay (if you are using that onclick behavior).

These preferences will remain constant through all of your exhibits utitlizing Visual Index.

Exhibit > Edit

When you are editing your exhibit you have additional options for refining the look in the Exhibit Options dialog. Each format has it's own particular set of options, but usually you can change:

- image display size
- thumbnail size/shape
- files before or after text
- display of titles

Editing your style.css file

You will most likely need to your which theme you are using. You can find this information in the Admin > Themes section. The location of your theme is at:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/ndxzsite/$theme/style.css

There are also additional CSS rules in the base.css file in the same folder - these are for advanced users.

If you are editing with your text editor, you must be familiar how it works and also how to use FTP in order to load your file properly. Simply download the file, edit and reupload. Be sure to Shift + Browser refresh to see CSS changes.

Additionally, if you have placed edit permissions on the files in your themes folder you can edit them directly via Admin > Assets. Be careful because you can easily lose changes.

There are also inherent file security risks when using 777 permissions - ask your host if you can use 755 instead. Otherwise, it's a good idea to change your permissions back to 755 after you had edited them (using your FTP application).

Exhibit format / CSS rules

In some cases, you may need to edit your exhibit format of it's own particular CSS rules. You can find exhibit formats at:

/ndxzsite/plugin/format.$format.php

Normally, CSS rules are near the end of the file. Be very careful when making edits directly in the exhibit formats.

Feel free to ask more specific questions in our forum regarding customizations.

Good luck!